The Los Angeles-based Parents Television Council is urging California voters to reject Proposition 64, a ballot measure designed to legalize recreational marijuana use in the state, but that would also allow recreational marijuana to be advertised in broadcast, cable, radio, print and digital communications where at least 71.6% of the audience is expected to be 21 years of age or older.

“Supporters of Proposition 64 insist that the ballot measure’s wording would prohibit the marketing of marijuana to children, but that is a bald-faced lie. In fact, the measure’s wording allows recreational marijuana to be advertised at any time of the day and on almost any television program, whether on broadcast or on cable. The statutory age threshold is contemptible, as the broadcast networks’ average viewer is well into the 50s – and even the average age of a Disney Channel viewer is 41.3 years. Our nation rightly prohibits the marketing of tobacco products on television so as to protect children, and the marketing of marijuana should be held to no lesser of a standard,” said Tim Winter, president of the PTC.

“If the ballot initiative’s purpose, as advocated by a number of heavy-hitter celebrities, is to address criminal justice and health issues, then Californians should stop the measure on November 8th and instead craft a measure that specifically achieves those goals. Marijuana should not be advertised to children, and this measure opens the floodgates that would be impossible to close.”

Marijuana should never be advertised nor legalized. It is not safer than cigarettes, and it does kill people. Proposition 64 should not be passed for any reason, even if it forbids the advertising of marijuana by any means whatsoever. If I could go back in time and stop marijuana from ever being discovered, I would do so in a femtosecond.

The people who recognize marijuana’s danger have years of education and experience to back them up. Those people include doctors, nurses and police officers. The people who believe marijuana should be legalized often times only have a high school diploma or a GED. Those people include teenagers who spend more time looking at screens than at reality and who have the wrong friends, and rock stars who feel they need drugs in order to be creative.

Marijuana is dangerous. That is not my personal opinion, a myth, an urban legend, an old wives’ tale, or a conspiracy theory. That is an indisputable fact.

Will people want to legalize cocaine, heroin, or LSD next? I sincerely hope not.